Structural trusses are used in a wide variety of situations and constructions. They can be used horizontally, vertically or in any other orientation. They include a plurality of rigid frame members interconnected to one another so as to create a skeletal open structure.
Some structural trusses are used in situations where they will be often moved from one location to another. An example of situation is when they are used in performance stages. Many performance stages are designed to be transported from site to site, for example when they are used as concert tour stages. They are thus assembled and disassembled frequently.
Each time a temporary construction must be assembled at a given site, it requires parts to be transported at the site, for instance using one or more truck trailers or the like. This often includes transporting large parts such as structural trusses. Since the space available on a truck trailer is inevitably limited and minimizing the total number of truck trailers is always desirable, minimizing the overall space of each part, especially the largest ones, can have a huge impact on the transportation costs.
Some structural trusses are made of a plurality of parts that are welded or otherwise permanently attached together. They cannot be folded or be completely disassembled into smaller parts. They are thus relatively large in size and they require a lot of space. Structural trusses made of a plurality of detachable parts can be stored and transported in considerably smaller spaces. However, they require that all the parts to be assembled before use and disassembled afterwards. This increases the assembly time and the labor costs.
Foldable structural truss arrangements have been suggested in the past. These arrangements often have parts hinged and/or otherwise operatively connected together to create a self forming assembly that can be collapsed to save space during storage and transportation, and deployed thereafter before use. Examples can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 3,235,038 (Nesslinger) of 1966, U.S. Pat. No. 5,016,418 (Rhodes et al.) of 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,349 (Onoda et al.) of 1991, U.S. Pat. No. 7,716,897 (Merrifield) of 2010, U.S. Pat. No. 8,028,488 (Doff) of 2011, and US-2012/0110946 (Daas et al.) of 2012. However, the arrangements disclosed in these references are not always well adapted for use in a wide range of environments and purposes. Some of them also require complex constructions and can be difficult to implement. Still, while reducing the size of some structural truss arrangements when they are in their folded position would be highly desirable, this can be very challenging to achieve, if not impossible, using existing approaches, especially if this must be done without reducing the supported load and without significantly impairing one or more additional design factors, for instance weight, manufacturing costs, assembly time on a site and the associated labor costs, to name just a few.
Clearly, room for improvements still exists in this technical area.